Marine Pilot Dies in Jet Crash in Britain

LONDON — An American Marine was killed on Wednesday when the combat jet he was piloting crashed shortly after taking off from a Royal Air Force base in Lakenheath, England, about 80 miles northeast of London, the authorities said.

The jet, an F/A-18 Hornet, crashed in farmland between 10:30 and 11 a.m. The Marine Corps said the crash had occurred near Littleport, while the police said it had occurred slightly to the east, around Redmere. The two villages are about six miles apart; Redmere is about eight miles west of the base in Lakenheath.

“We can confirm one fatality and believe there was just one person on board the aircraft,” the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, the police agency responsible for the area, said in a statement.

The corps confirmed the crash but did not have additional details. A Marine Corps spokesman at the United States European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, said the pilot was part of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232, in the Third Marine Aircraft Wing, and was based at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, a section of San Diego.

While the Lakenheath base is owned by the Royal Air Force, it has been under the operational control of the United States military for decades.

“The loss in Cambridgeshire today is terrible news, my thoughts & prayers are with all involved,” the United States ambassador to Britain, Matthew Barzun, wrote on Twitter.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: World Briefing | Europe; Britain: U.S. Marine Dies in Jet Crash. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe